We’re in the home stretch and hope you will share the pride. I am a former Colombia Peace Corps Volunteer living in Washington DC with a foundation in Medellin that provides laptops and teacher training and emphasizes technology, English and leadership in 21 schools with 8000 kids: MarinaOrthFoundation.org <http://marinaorthfoundation.org/>. Two of our robotics teams, The Little Engineers, all girls 12-13, and Digiminds, 3 boys and 1 girl, ages 10-11, are about to have one of the most thrilling experiences of their short lives. They have won the robotics championship of Colombia sponsored by RoboRAVE and will be traveling to Albuquerque May 7 – 13 to represent Colombia and compete in the worldwide RoboRAVE competition. These kids beat some of the best public and private schools to have this chance and it is quite an accomplishment for them. They have never been in an airplane before and most have never traveled outside of Medellin.

Please click on our link below to see the video with these great kids, the real distance they have come and are about to travel. The Friends of Colombia and Albuquerque RPCVS have been loyal and supportive of the Marina Orth Foundation as has the NPCA. Now I’m reaching out to all of you because these kids would never have gotten to this point if we hadn’t all once shared the Peace Corps experience. Please help us across the finish line.

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Paul Simon’s SOUND OF SILENCE is resounding in my mind this morning and reading this post from John Coyne:
[Verse 1]
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

[Verse 2]
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by
The flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

[Verse 3]
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

[Verse 4]
“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

[Verse 5]
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said:
“The words of the prophets are
Written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence.”

This track about the inability of people to communicate emotionally, was thought by many to be a response to the Kennedy assassination as it was written during the same time and then released three months later in 1964.

Paul Simon originally wrote the song as an acoustic ballad for their debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, but Simon & Garfunkel’s first single version died and the album was considered a commercial failure.

Later in ‘65, while Simon was in England, Tom Wilson, producer of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” asked members of Dylan’s studio band to add electric guitar and drums. Columbia released the amplified Silence, which became a hit before Simon and Garfunkel had even heard it. This second version peaked at #1 in the U.S., and charted in 7 others countries, becoming one of the most successful remixes of all-time.

A third version of the song was released in 1982 on their internationally successful live album, The Concert in Central Park.